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Other recommended blogs: Amy, Calpernia, Claire, Gwen, Kara, Reise, W3bgrl-Auntie Solder.
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Monday, 2004.08.02:
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Gross. It's a good thing I'm working from home right now. About 2 hours after I had taken a shower and done some "personal maintenance" I was sitting down and typing away when I noticed a weird feeling. Then to my horror I realized that it was a whole bunch of water (I hope) running down my leg. Ew. I had been forewarned years ago that sometimes water gets trapped up there and it releases later when the skin relaxes. Mental note: bring a change of clothes when going back to the office.
Wednesday, 2004.08.04:
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"It hasn't hit me yet that I'm moving," she said as we drove in darkness. Only the soft red glow of the dashboard and the occassional street lamp illuminated the interiors. Yeah, this is the last time I'm going to see her for a while, I thought. It's funny how people mysteriously come into your life and then just as quickly seem to go. But this isn't goodbye, really. I'm hoping to meet up again one of these days, sooner than later. Take care...
Tuesday, 2004.08.10:
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Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.... Well I got the #4 in today to the 3rd to last dot. Good grief that thing is huge. I mean, huge. I remember when I first got the set of dilators I held the largest in my hands and I wondered how in the heck I'd ever get it in. Even on the very day when the packing was pulled I almost cried because I couldn't pass the #1. Well here it is about 35 days later and we've come a long ways...
Speaking of dilation I had a scary thing happen with the #3. While it was all the way inserted and doing its normal thing all of the sudden I felt a pop! and looseness. I immediately took it out---no signs of anything nasty on the dilator itself. I called up the surgeon's office and they said it might be one of the internal sutures releasing. But not to worry because at this point being this far out from surgery the sutures aren't doing their job anyways.
Thursday, 2004.08.12:
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It would seem that all of the blogs in the past month an a half deal with some aspect of SRS, and you'd likely be right. Pretty much my entire life is revolving around it right now...
Guess who arrived today? Mr. #5. Yup. In all of its 1.5"-diameter, 5"-circumference glory. I'm not looking forward to accomodating it...
A few days ago our toilets started backing up. (!!!) Yeah. I think I am mostly to blame. I've been looking at how much toilet paper I've been going through and it is insane. (I highly suggest that should you get SRS that you go to Costco or Sam's Club and buy yourself a pallet of TP.) I have been trying to conserve on the paper, too. But there's just a lot of mess that gets generated over the course of a day. And because I'm at home almost all the time now I use our facilities a lot. My second suggestion: get cheapo very-degradable TP as it will disintegrate faster in your pipes.
So, onto some non-TG stuff...
I've been out a lot. Thank goodness I can drive. Like, there was a jazz festival in our area this past weekend and I ended up being there pretty much all weekend long. It was hot and uber-crowded, but the music was pretty good. Some of the youth groups were pretty good---reminds me of the days when I used to do jazz band. (This one time, at band camp! [Uh, I actually did play the flute in school, and the #5 is much bigger than... {But I heavily digress.} ] ) Anyways, it's always a nice feeling to be bathed in good music.
I also did an experiment of substituting real meat with a substitute when I made Hamburger Helper a few days ago. Boca Crumblers work OK but the soy taco meat does not. Definitely stay away from that toxic crapola if you're making Hamburger Helper...
Sunday, 2004.08.15:
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The most amazing thing just happened. I mean jaw dropping.
I was over at my parents this morning and after breakfrast the three of us were standing around and chatting. My Mom and Dad just came back from their own vacation and my Mom couldn't remember one event, so she turns to Dad and says:
"Dear, why don't you explain it her?"Eh?! Wha-wha-what?! HER?!
Talk about a first. I mean, they still used "he" and my guy name in the rest of the conversation, but for that one instant they actually said "her". Whoa. Oh, it gets better.
I was showing some of my post-SRS pictures where I was with a group of other nurses. I was in a skirt in one, a dress in another. My Mom's reaction was like, "wow, is that you? You look good..." That just made me smile.
Monday, 2004.08.16:
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Wow. I'm impressed. At one time the #4 was the Titanic, the behemoth that could not be surmounted, an impossible goal. Um. That sorta changed. Now it's more like it's hard but definitely possible. Someone had once told me that during your healing phase that's the best time to try to aggressively move up in sizes. Looks like that may be true. Anyways, I have another doctor's appointment coming up soon and I guess we'll find out if this rather quick increase in size was a Good ThingTM or a Really Bad ThingTM.
My parents are apparently in an interesting place now. They're not accepting and they're definitely not happy about the whole transition. They're still using "he" and Boy Name all the time---except for that one time Mom made a conscious effort. But. Things are slowly changing. I think they are beginning to realize the permanency of this and that transition can work. Of course, I'm always saying that long term everything becomes more clear, so 5 years from now we'll see if they have finally come around and if I am indeed doing things "successfully".
On a more somber note, a friend's mom just passed away. It has been quite a prolonged battle with her medical conditions---she's in a better place now. That, compounded with my parents talking about the finality of their lives, just kinda put a damper on the day yesterday.
When I got back home I had this manuscript that my Dad has been typing up. My grandmother (the only surviving grandparent) is approaching her time as well, so my Dad is trying to do a bunch of things. One of them is to try to capture her story in a biography of sorts. He had finally gotten back a whole stack of notes his mom made and he assembled it into a thin book. It tells of how she was put up for adoption, how her dad was shot, how she got shipped back to the mainland, how she was forcibly married at a young age, and how she came to be here now with 6 children. Quite an amazing story with oh-so-many twists. She's a real survivor.
I was trying to somehow tie in her attitudes with how my life is going. I think the thing I'll take away from all of this is that she has always had a sense of hope that things will get better...
...
On a lighter note, I just had to laugh when I saw this web site selling pork rinds as the:
"... pork rinds are all the rage with low-carb dieters. They are high in protein and have 0 carbohydrates."(Yeah, and they're loaded with fat.)
Just remember, kids, Dr. Robert Atkins had at least 1 heart attack, had congestive heart failure, was hypertensive, and was technically obese at a BMI over 26---does it matter that he supposedly died from a "head injury"?
Wednesday, 2004.08.18:
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Is gross machisimo back in fashion? From Big & Rich's Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy to Comedy Central's The Man Show... It has to make you laugh.
Sunday, 2004.08.22:
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I've been researching a whole bunch of different career options at this point. A few seem jucier than others, but it's scary. It's like I'm embarking on a career transition. As I gather more information I find out that I like other career paths. I'm targetting art or music---so very different than the engineering life I've been leading. I'd also like to explore product design or marketing aspects. I don't know. In some sense it feels like the future is wide open.
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Went out for my weekend walk/run with friends. I was really not content to walk and I've been feeling better lately. So I decided to jog. Yes, jog. I don't know if it's advisable or not to run so early after surgery, but I can tell you I felt pretty good today. I was obviously not able to push it like I normally do but just the fact I was moving faster than walking was a high on its own.
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Spent the evening up at Kara's. This time we had a few new faces show up. Yay. I like meeting new people. One of them was born 10 years after me---geez, that made me feel old. Well, it got me to thinking about a lot of stuff. Like, if I had the information resources (e.g. Internet) when I was in my teens, what would I have done?
I've always said that in restrospect I probably transitioned at about the right time. In my case I was gainfully employed, almost all my debts paid off, life was pretty routine, and I was in the right frame of mind to really think about what I wanted to do. Even though it took me a long time to get to where I am today, so far things have been working. I've had very little resistance or hurdles to jump. The biggest barrier has always been my comfort level at proceeding with new things.
But I wonder that if I had wanted to do something while I was in college ... could I have done it? I went to a private university on loans, scholarships, and working. I was busy all of the time and I actually completed all my coursework for a major and double minor in about 3 years, all while leading two clubs, doing intramural sports, and having steady girlfriends. What would transition have done to me?
Well, for one I'm sure my grades would have suffered---not that grade matter after you get out of school anyways. But, I probably would have had to concentrate on my major, drop the minors, drop the extracurricular stuff, and take on another job. I probably could have done the name change so I would have exited college with a degree in my chosen name. I did save a bunch of money by commuting from home; I would have had to move out of my parent's house, take on a couple of roomies, and not have any money to feed my comics/anime hobbies. I probably would have had barely enough resources for electrolysis and hormones. Life would have been a hectic blur.
I also think that it would have really impacted my ability to get an office job after college because I'd be so distracted with all the transition stuff. I probably would have done odd jobs instead of rolling into the internship which I found myself in. That would have meant that gathering resources to complete SRS would have probably taken me until I was 23 and I would have chosen someone other than Dr. Meltzer. I would have lost most of my guy friends and probably would be really dug into the T community. And when I finished transition I might have been about 25.
Who knows, really? But I think when I look at how things went it would have taken me at least 5 years no matter when I started. The main differences, I think, are that I would have had a lot more battle scars the earlier I did things. Even though the physical results of HRT are much better early on (we all know that) my health would have been different than it is today.
Monday, 2004.08.23:
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Weird. A GG friend called me on the phone from her work number (so I didn't recognize it) and the first thing I thought when I heard her voice was: who is this, another T* with a my celly number? There was just something odd about the voice I couldn't place. But, no, it turned out to be my GG friend after all.
So the point of this blog was just to prove that even GGs have odd voices sometimes, especially over the phone. And GGs sometimes get sir'ed, like one of my old girlfriends. Go figure!
Tuesday, 2004.08.24:
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I'm pissed. And I'm blogging because, it's a my way of venting. So there.
I hate it when smart people are stubborn. You explain something to someone, they say they understand it, they agree it is a fundamental problem, and then they say effectively "you know I can't change my nature of my being". What the f$#!$##$!$#. Grr!
So I'm pissed.
Wednesday, 2004.08.25:
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Crikey. My past caught up to me twice in one day. So I was back over at a friend's house that was near where I had once lived. I went to the dry cleaners to drop off my laundry and they asked for my name and phone number. I tell them. Then the guy looks at me funny and says that they have a matching phone number but it's under an "Andy" not "Amber". Um... uh... But the guy shrugged and changed it for me. Then I was over at the video store renting Dead Like Me and they too asked for my phone number. They said that someone else was using that phone number. Errr.... well... sorta... not really...
*sigh*
Just when you think you've escaped...
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Two other weird developments.
My housing situation is potentially changing faster than I wanted it to. Not only does my current household have a potential of breaking up in the next few months but there's this other guy who wants me to move in with him. I'm seriously considering it. Now why would I do something as silly as that---anyone that knows me knows I don't make snap decisions. Well, the two of us share a lot in common and I think it would be a lot of fun. The trouble is I'm pretty sure he's hetero. (Ok, Amber, what's the problem with that?) Well, you know the old thing about how girls and guys can't be friends because the sex issue gets in the way? Err. Yeah. If he was gay or if a GG had asked me instead things might be different...
In other hetero news, a friend is trying to set me up with one of her friends. She tells me the guy is great; I don't know because I've only seen a pic and a brief description. I don't like dating either---too much pressure. So all these mixed feelings are floating around me now. Part of me wants to say yes to a date because, well, it might turn out to be really good. The other part of me wonders if I'm ready for dating yet. I don't want to analyze this situation too deeply, but yet I still am wondering what I'm going to do...
Friday, 2004.08.27:
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Finally responded to the guy Marianne introduced me to. Hm. We'll see what happens now...
Sunday, 2004.08.29:
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Started using a Premarin cream applied to the labia. Supposedly it's supposed to assist with healing as well as pinken the skin. My endo is indifferent about it. She says in the worst case it'll be a decent topical moisturizer.
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I was out last night with a few friends (yes, MTFs), one of them I recently met at Kara's: Samantha. Everyone knows she's the young'un of the group; it doesn't make me feel old but it does make me reminisce. I still think it's ironic that Southpark was responsible for me being here today post-op telling you all this. It was an episode that had the word "hermaphrodite" in it, which made me Google it, which led to intersex societies, which led to transgender sites, which led to transsexual sites, which led to therapy, which ... All of that a little over 6 years ago.
Had I had the information about MTFs when I was in my teens (like the teens of today) I probably would have tried to do something. I always wonder that is transition really is inevitable or not. On the one hand it seems so radical and like it's a solution to a problem that may be more perceived than real. Ugh, I'm not making sense. Maybe more simply: is transition a choice or a necessity? There's your topic, go and debate.
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The following I was wondering if I should post it publicly or not, but this site is all about disclosure rather than hiding information. So, skip this entry if you don't want to be grossed out.
OK.
So, I've been trying to move up to the #5. It doesn't seem all that much bigger now (proportionally) but I think I've hit a physical barrier on how much the PC muscle is willing to stretch. The #4 was uber-difficult but the PC muscle eventually yielded. But with the #5 the muscle is already stretched pretty taut---and at this stage of healing the muscle is really trying to mend itself back together. (Which it's biologically programmed to. [But that's of course why we dilate to keep it from closing up.]) Since I can't force the #5 through and the #4 can't adequately stretch the muscle even with circumfrential motions, what else could I use? A #5-taper? No, I don't have one. (And here comes the gross part.) So I have been trying the next best thing: the hand. It makes a perfect taper, you have to admit, but it's pretty icky. On the other hand (no pun intended), it's really interesting feeling around. I can equate it to one of those large aquariums with a tunnel through it: you can see all the stuff around you from within your transparent cage. I'm tempted to read up on anatomy to figure out where all the organs are that surround the neo-vagina. It's fascinating...
Monday, 2004.08.30:
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I picked up the box from the shelf and then he turned to me:
Wow, you have a lot of muscle definition.Urk! Um, shit. Think fast. Uh. Uh.
Yeah, I used to swim a lot.Argh. Why can't these muscles go away?
I'm not as strong as I used to be by a long shot, but I still have the remnants of the muscles in my arms and legs. There was a time not too long ago when I was still doing situps and pushups and a bit of weights. I wanted to become stronger and it was sort of my way of trying to bulk up---even though I never really did.
Here we are more than two years on HRT and the muscles are still there. Or at least their ghosts are. And I've always been really self-conscious about it. Friends have told me "your arms are fine" and that I just look like an "athletic girl". All of which is true. But a little too athletic for my taste, if you know what I mean. And from time to time something happens which makes me all self conscious again.
This latest incident was when I was out with a couple of guy friends from "the gang"---people I haven't told and assume don't know. And we were shopping together, me in my usual shorts and tee shirt. I had just picked up something of semi-significant weight and that's when one of the guys started staring at me. I said the first thing I could think of. I know I can't deny I have muscles. And it's not the case that I don't think girls can look good with big muscles. It's just ... not my thing right now.
Part of me wants to go on some crazy starvation diet to get rid of them. But I know that's stupid and would probably injure me more than help. (Especially being so newly post-op.) And I know that in the future my body will sort things out. I just don't want to wait that long. Transition isn't done and over with in a couple years. It drags on and on and ... Sometimes you have to wonder if it will ever end.
I suppose that as more and more people begin transitioning at a younger stage we'll end up with a lot of healthy 20-somethings that are more or less undetectable because they've had years for their bodies to readjust. But for those of us currently stuck in transition, well, it feels like an infinity, not just an eternity.
Tuesday, 2004.08.31:
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OK, what the heck. This makes me mad. Mad Amber Not Good. Grr.
Aiyaa. Ow. Ow. Ow. I finally got the #5 in. Ack. After much patience the muscles finally yielded. It worked its way in a couple inches and I figured that was enough of a victory so I stopped and now I'm feeling the aftereffects of overstretching. Ow. Ow. Ow. But it's a good pain I suppose.
Oh, so I found my Hollywood name should I ever want to star in some really bad B movies:
Lucite LuOK, you can stop groaning now.
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Entries may show the mood for the day. From best to worst moods here's the list:
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Ecstatic -
Happy -
Good -
OK -
Blech -
Sad -
Abysmal
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